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Women in Science

Publishing results

Video clip: Jane says that nowadays editors often want more and more experiments completed before they agree to publish a paper.

And you said that editors are now wanting more and more in their papers, what did you mean by more and more?

I think more often than not now you will get a paper back saying you need to do another experiment, another three or four experiments.

Oh, I see.

Whereas that didn’t used to happen so much in our field. It used to be if you’ve done a good body of work and it was innovative. It had discovered something and the paper was written well. The results were sound. Fine. But now it’s more like, ‘Well this is okay. But what about the next bit?’ And so it’s almost like they want the next paper in the existing paper and it’s all about competition for space. How big an impact is this paper going to make. Well the more that’s in it, the bigger impact it’s going to make. But it’s got a bit ridiculous now.